Post by petea on Mar 1, 2024 9:20:22 GMT
It is certainly an interesting transition. Ina stops working at the end of May this year and then has a one year 'sabbatical' (during which she cannot work) before her pension kicks in to replace her salary. She is retiring 4 years early, but has some investments to replace the pension lost due to that. She is looking forward to it and although still active in a wide range of projects she is shutting things down and handing stuff over after over 30 years in the same organisation.
Over the last few years I have been transferring the running of my company to the employees. The pandemic caused a bit of a setback and I ended up working full time (and more) during it as our expertise was useful to issues it raised (we are a microbiology testing and consultancy service). I have now gone back to minimal input on a day-to-day basis and my colleagues only call on me when my technical (and occasionally business management) expertise / experience is required. I have 2 more years as the president of a standards organisation left to run before handing that over and another 3 years as a work-package leader of an EU Horizon programme to go and a couple of PhD students for whom I am an external supervisor (another 3 years) and a few other research programmes I am engaged with. However, to a certain extent they are more 'fun' than work even though they do require some reporting activities and are in some ways a nice way to wind down from my professional life as it were.
I have quite a few interests away from science though and am quite pleased that at the moment work is kind of getting in the way of those, which bodes well for the future. Aside from interests in audio, I am keen on photography and have a background in technical imaging and a few projects I want to pursue - although I will shut down my darkroom in the UK I have one here in Germany along with a functioning studio (I might sell part of my enormous collection of cameras and optics though). I enjoy making things and have a few projects in that area on the go (two mechanical automata) and am still thinking about building a long-case clock. I also have a few model kits (vehicles from 2OO1: A Space Odyssey) to build and modify and would like to do more drawing and painting. The kits will need some electronics and I want to develop a more 'intelligent' feeder for my aquarium. Then there is the garden in the UK (although Ina has plans for that, especially growing vegetables and fruit) and a 400 year old house to try to prevent falling down! So, bored I won't be!
Over the last few years I have been transferring the running of my company to the employees. The pandemic caused a bit of a setback and I ended up working full time (and more) during it as our expertise was useful to issues it raised (we are a microbiology testing and consultancy service). I have now gone back to minimal input on a day-to-day basis and my colleagues only call on me when my technical (and occasionally business management) expertise / experience is required. I have 2 more years as the president of a standards organisation left to run before handing that over and another 3 years as a work-package leader of an EU Horizon programme to go and a couple of PhD students for whom I am an external supervisor (another 3 years) and a few other research programmes I am engaged with. However, to a certain extent they are more 'fun' than work even though they do require some reporting activities and are in some ways a nice way to wind down from my professional life as it were.
I have quite a few interests away from science though and am quite pleased that at the moment work is kind of getting in the way of those, which bodes well for the future. Aside from interests in audio, I am keen on photography and have a background in technical imaging and a few projects I want to pursue - although I will shut down my darkroom in the UK I have one here in Germany along with a functioning studio (I might sell part of my enormous collection of cameras and optics though). I enjoy making things and have a few projects in that area on the go (two mechanical automata) and am still thinking about building a long-case clock. I also have a few model kits (vehicles from 2OO1: A Space Odyssey) to build and modify and would like to do more drawing and painting. The kits will need some electronics and I want to develop a more 'intelligent' feeder for my aquarium. Then there is the garden in the UK (although Ina has plans for that, especially growing vegetables and fruit) and a 400 year old house to try to prevent falling down! So, bored I won't be!
